Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1991 Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India

Year of Migration to the UK: 2012

Biography

Artist and printmaker, Shivangi Ladha was born in Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India in 1991. She received her BFA in Painting from the College of Art, Delhi University between 2008 and 2012. She then immediately moved to London, England, to further her studies. She completed an MFA in Fine Arts at Wimbledon School of Art between 2012 and 2014. It was there, Ladha stated, that she started to find her ‘own voice as an artist’: ‘I purposefully pushed the boundaries of my drawing in as many ways as I could, while simultaneously exploring varied media like animation, performance art, installations and printmaking. I realised that printmaking was what best suited my expression’ (Sen, 2022). With this new clarity, she subsequently completed an MA in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art (RCA) between 2014 and 2016.

Alongside her studies in the UK, Ladha exhibited in various group shows, including the prestigious Jerwood Drawing Prize at Jerwood Space, London in 2014. Finding that in London ‘identity is always evolving, always changing’, Ladha began questioning her own ‘identity’ and entered a ‘self-exploration zone’ (Hello, Print Friend podcast, 2021). This resulted in a series of screen-prints, including Self-Portrait (2017), shown in Fragmented Identities: The Gendered Roles of Women in Art Through the Ages at Mead Art Museum, Amherst College in the USA (2018–19). Addressing the ambivalences of identity and seeking truth in identity, her work continued to investigate gender, sexuality, race, caste, creed, disability and class differentiation, often raising awareness in series such as Acid Attack Survivor (2018), acquired by the British Museum, London (BURU, 2020). In 2016, Ladha mentored BFA students at Norwich University of the Arts, and in 2017 she received the Anthony Dawson Young Printmaker Award from The Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, London. In 2020, her set of prints, Just Be (2015–16), was included in the Midnight’s Family: 70 Years of Indian Artists in Britain online exhibition at Ben Uri Gallery and Museum. Noted in the exhibition catalogue as ‘the youngest artist in the show’, Ladha was celebrated for her prints in the context of ‘politically divisive times’, and how through ‘the act of creation by repetitive processes’ they transcend ‘human perception’ and challenge ‘the viewers’ cognition and concept of identity’ (BURU, 2020).

Following her studies, Ladha returned to India where in 2018 she founded the India Printmaker House, with a mission to promote printmaking by organising residencies, prizes, grants and exhibitions. Since then, she was awarded third prize in the London-based The Arts Family’s Emerging Artist Award – South Asia (2021–22), ‘selected for her self-portrait which represents the collective voice of a crowd seeking to rise and transcend to a place where all beings are essentially one’ (Business Standard, 2022). She also won the New Prints Artist Development Award, International Print Centre New York (2018), and was a nominee for the Queen Sonja Print Award, Sweden (2021). Around this time of expanding reputation, her works were acquired by the Reliance Foundation and Anant Art Gallery, India (2020). Ladha also received the Global Talent Award from Arts Council England and has been involved in various educational initiatives in London’s art institutions. From 2020–21, she was an online mentor for the University of the Arts London. In September 2022, she was an educator at the Young London Print Prize, part of the Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair in which she worked with schools in east London towards bridging the gap between compulsory education and the contemporary art world. In October of the same year, she began a position as Printmaking Facilitator and Educator at Richmond upon Thames College in southwest London.

Ladha lives and works between London and India. Her work is held in the UK public domain in the British Museum collection.

Related books

Ben Uri Research Unit, 'Midnight's Family: 70 Years of Indian Artists in Britain', exhibition catalogue (London: BURU, 2020) (print on demand)

Public collections

British Museum

Related organisations

Anthony Dawson Young Printmaker Award, Royal Society of Painters-Printmakers (Recipient)
Art Print Residence (Resident)
East London Printmakers (Resident)
Global Talent Award, Arts Council England (Recipient)
Jerwood Drawing Prize (Exhibitor)
New Prints Artist Development Award, International Print Centre New York (Recipient)
Queen Sonja Print Award (Nominee)
Richmond upon Thames College (Printmaking Facilitator and Educator)
Royal College of Art (Student)
SNAP Studio, Canada (Resident)
The Arts Family (TAF) (Third place in the TAF Emerging Artist Award)
University of the Arts London (Mentor)
Wimbledon School of Art (Student)
Women's Studio Workshop (Resident)
Young London Print Prize (Educator)

Selected exhibitions

Midnight's Family: 70 Years of Indian Artists in Britain, Ben Uri Gallery & Museum virtual exhibition (2020)
Break/Link , Cafe Gallery, Southwark Park Galleries, London (2016)
Stewarts Law RCA Secret, Royal College of Art, London (2015-2016)
Boxed Out, Cafe Gallery, Southwark Park Galleries, London (2015)
Sensing & Trapping Across, Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art , London (2015)
Jerwood Drawing Prize, Jerwood Space, London (2014)
Fine Art Work-in-progress Show, Dyson Gallery, Royal College of Art, London (2014)
MFA Degree Show, Wimbledon College of Art, London (2014)
Threads, Rag Factory, London (2013)
Chain Reaction, Menier Gallery, London (2013)
Film Display, No.w.here, London (2013)
Spaced Out, Wimbledon Space, London (2013)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Shivangi Ladha]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Shivangi Ladha artist